"Are you a dude?"

And my technicolour bag threw off the whole outfit!
Grrr. Some day I'm going to invest in a black purse.

I was walking to the bank yesterday, about two blocks from my house. I had decided to femme it up a bit with a tunic, tights and silly high heels.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" said a guy at a bus stop as I waked by. When I didn't stop he continued, somewhat more urgently, "ma'am? Excuse me, ma'am!"

Suddenly I realized he was addressing me. "Uh, yeah?"

He gave me a story about not having enough money for the bus and asked if I had any change to spare. For the record, I'm pretty conflicted about giving alms to panhandlers. I'm sure it does nothing to treat the actual causes of poverty and often just enables bad habits, but at the same time I find it really hard to say no when I'm asked. For better or worse, I gave him a dollar. (Incidentally, I feel like I get panhandled more often when I'm presenting as a woman. Is that, like, a thing, or am I just imagining it?)

As soon as I started talking to him I saw a look of confusion cross his face, slowly replaced by one of dawning realization. Afterwards, as I was turning to leave, he asked me, very straightfowardly: "are you a dude?" Phrased more politely, this might have been: what gender(s) do you identify with? And that, of course, is precisely what I'm trying to figure out myself.

To borrow a line from The Lord of the Rings, that question "needed a week's answer, or none." I chose the latter option: I gave him a smile, said "maybe!", and continued on my way.

This exchange confirmed two things for me that I'd previously suspected. It confirmed that I do pass as female, at a glance, at least some of the time. And it confirmed that I'm quickly read as male if someone's actually paying attention to me, and especially if I'm talking to someone face to face.

Oh well. As much as part of me would like to pass all the time, the good thing about not passing is it means being visibly trans, which helps raise awareness that people like us do, in fact, exist in the real world.

Struggle, decision and hope

Today it's really hard. And it's not just the gender issues, it's a whole bunch of things. I've always suffered from depressive episodes and I seem to be in the middle of one right now. I've also been having headaches and trouble sleeping for the past two weeks. And now that school's done I need a summer job, but I haven't found one yet and I'm running out of money.

And as much as I'd like to think that all these other problems would magically go away if I were living as a female, I know that's not the case. So I can't even really blame gender.

Aaahh bare shoulders aaaaaahhh!!!
(Actually I look pretty good here, I think)

I did get manage out in girl mode once last week. In fact, I'm kind of proud of myself: it was my first time going out with bare shoulders and bare legs. I felt a lot more vulnerable not having all the layers to bundle up in like I did during the winter. But it was a beautiful day, and it felt so good to take in the sunshine as me. I'm not under any illusions of having passed, but I did get called ma'am by a cashier. That was nice of him. :)

On Saturday I was at a restaurant with a couple of friends. I think our server might have been trans. She was certainly tall enough for it, not to mention the broad shoulders, huge hands and small bust. She was very pretty.

Envy isn't the right word for it, but there's a certain feeling I get when I see other trans women having the courage to be themselves. And every time I do it's one more nagging voice saying: Ashley, you need to do something about this gender problem. And while that tends to trigger the dysphoria, it's also kind of inspiring. (The same thing happened when my classmate at school started presenting female.)

And that brings me to the question: what am I going to do about it?

While I still haven't totally figured that out, I have made one decision: I need to get to a point where I can function normally before I go back to school. I failed a lot of classes these past two semesters, and most of the problem was my inability to focus on anything when the dysphoria struck. It doesn't make sense to keep throwing money away on classes when I'm not dealing with the issue. So I'm going to see a doctor sometime soon-ish and maybe start counselling. I'm going to return to my local support group. And I'm going to start electrolysis.

That last one just makes a lot of sense. I've realized that even if I decide not to transition (which seems unlikely), I'm still never going to actually want a beard. Even if I am just a feminine male (which I doubt), I still have a gender identity that's incongruous with facial hair. So transition or not, electro is a good idea.

What this means is that I won't be going back to school in the fall, since I can't afford both that and hair removal without going deeply into debt. I might go back to school in January, or I might just take a whole year off from academics. We'll see how it goes.

I'm also starting to reconcile myself to the fact that HRT may be in my future. There are a number of reasons why I don't want this. The biggest one by far is my desire for biological fatherhood— I want babies!!— but also lots of little fears about the phyisical and emotional changes that would take place. But at the end of the day if you need HRT you need it: it's not like gender dysphoria gives a shit about your hopes and fears.

So yeah: I'm struggling today. I'm pretty darn depressed. But I can see the steps I need to take (find a job, see a doctor, start electro...) and for now that's giving me something to work towards. So, in a way, I guess I'm sort of hopeful too.

They say it gets better. I hope they're right.

Out in the sun last week.
See, I was happy then at least! :)

Christmas in the closet

The past two months have been a time of very rapid progress for me. In a short amount of time I've advanced from peering out of the closet to taking my first tentative steps into the world as my real (female?) self. And I felt comfortable as me, and it was like fresh air and sunshine.

And then, with its great clattering of tacky songs, comes Christmas. Suddenly I am hurled back into the suffocating darkness of the closet. The door is shut and latched, and I am forced to contend once more with the absurd fact of hiding my identity from people I love.

This is because, of course, all the progress I made stopped short of coming out to my parents.

In my previous post I wrote of walking to the grocery store and buying lunch as a girl. That day also happened to be the first time I spent an entire day as a girl, which was lovely. I hoped that with all that girl-time my gender might stop bothering me for a while and I decided to be a boy the next day. But it was just as difficult as ever, and this more or less confirmed for me that I will probably have to socially transition.

A couple days later I was a girl again. This time I put gas in my car, got a bunch of groceries, talked to the cashier with my first attempt at a female voice, and went Christmas shopping at an antique store. What I've learned from all this is that either I pass, or people in general don't give a shit about crossdressers— and to be honest, the latter sounds more likely— because no one gave any signs that anything was out of the ordinary.

Christmas is a huge deal in my family, and in general I actually enjoy it. We had our celebration early, on the 22nd, because my brother and his wife, (henceforth known as Carson and Jamey), were planning on spending the 25th with her family. My family always spends the day before Christmas together as well, which meant two days of pretending to be a boy. And not the effeminate boy I usually look like when I'm presenting male either, but a "typical" boy.

And so Christmas was fun, but it was also hard. It helped a lot having Carson and Jamey there, as they at least know about me. After we finished unwrapping the presents Jamey nudged me to follow her down the hall and gave me a small container of makeup from MAC: a clandestine Christmas gift. It wasn't much, but what it meant— an affirmation of my gender at a time when that's exactly what I needed— was huge. I ended up having to lock myself in the bathroom until I stopped crying, silly me! Sometimes the tears are just one more thing you have to hide...

I went home that evening thinking I had made it through a Christmas in the closet. But as I mentioned, we did Christmas early. And since I was still in town over the 24th and 25th, my parents suggested I spend those days at their house too. I didn't have a good reason not to, and resigned myself to continue the charade.

On the 23rd my brother and his wife were making the ten hour drive to visit her family in British Columbia. Someone turning left onto the highway didn't see them coming and pulled out just in time to cause an accident. My brother texted me from the ambulance. No one involved seemed to be seriously hurt, but they were going to the hospital just to be sure. Their car, however, was totalled. In the end Jamey had some minor whiplash, but that was the only injury. They actually made it to their destination that same night, somewhat later than intended. Carson asked me not to tell mom and dad about this incident, and I understood why: we all know my father is a chronic worrier. Still, this meant one more secret to keep.

Their car. Yikes...

The next day I returned to my parent's house. And even though I love my parents, I hated being around them. I'm very bad at pretending to be happy when I'm not. After two days of this they were fairly certain that there was something wrong with me that I was keeping from them. I would have liked to have said, "Relax guys, I'm just trans, it's not a big deal." But I was in no emotional state to have that whole conversation, so I left with the source of my malaise still (mostly) unknown.*

They've been pretty worried about me since then.

The ironic thing is that, with the exception of the last few days, I've actually been doing very well lately. I am, in general, happier than I've been in a long time— taking the first small steps toward living in the right gender has a way of doing that, I suppose. But of course that's not the part of me they saw. How could they have?

I suppose I ought to come out to them, and soon. Not just for my sake anymore, but for theirs too. It's unkind of me to let them worry so much when there's really nothing wrong. I'm kind of annoyed to have had my hand forced in this way, but I guess that's life. And in any event, I've been thinking about telling them for a long time.

I hope all goes well when I do.



* My mom did pick up on a hint that it was gender-related, but I won't go into that now because this post is already really long.

Another little milestone

Today I left the house as a girl for the second time. But unlike last time, when I walked around a quiet neighbourhood in the evening, this time I strode down busy streets in broad daylight. In fact, I walked right down to the nearby grocer and picked up something for lunch. So now, not only have I left the house as a girl, but I've also accomplished a real-world errand, even if it was just a small one. That, I feel, counts as another little milestone on the road to... well, wherever this is going.

I dressed very casually, of course. It warmed up above freezing today, so I didn't have to bundle up. I made sure to walk with confidence, keep my head up and make eye contact with people.

Casual!!

I'm sure if anyone had looked closely, they would have read me as male. But people at the grocery store aren't walking around thinking about gender; they're thinking about bread and milk and eggs. At a quick glance people probably assumed I was a woman and didn't pay the matter any more attention. In any event, I didn't notice any stares or double-takes, so I must not have stood out; (though maybe folks are just polite?). I went through self-checkout, so I didn't actually have to speak to anyone.

It wasn't overly thrilling or exciting, nor was I particularly nervous: I just felt like an ordinary girl buying herself some lunch. It's funny: just eight months ago I went to a different store, dressed as a boy, and bought a single tube of cheap mascara— my very first purchase as a crossdresser. And I was terrified. I went through self-checkout then too, and my hands were shaking so bad I could barely enter my PIN on the Interac machine. I've certainly come a long way these past eight months! :)